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Hi all,

Thanks for all the kind answers I received (including about my English)
and your concerns about following my diet. It was never my intention not
to follow it, but I am fortified in that opinion by the fact that you
all seem to share it. However, I'm not feeling any difference, that is
another strange part. I felt good and that has not changed. O, and I did
make a mistake by telling you that the blood test I had was negative for
gluten, I ment positive (little)! By the way, what is TPN? I would like
to give you a summarization of the Answers.

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Wouldn't it be nice if the doctors someday will know as much as we do
about the diet. I try to educate mine gradually  by giving him articles,
etc.

I know more about CD than my doctor.  I take him articles I've pulled
up from the  web.

I too did not have any outward signs of Celiac Disease, but I did have a
very low iron count in my blod tests.  A biopsy confirmed my diagnosis,
and I have been gluten free for about one and-a-half years now,  I'm
feeling much better.

If your doctor's think the strict diet is not necessary, just ask
youself if you feel better without the gluten. I'm betting you will feel
better without gluten than you did with it in your diet.  Follow your
own common sense.If it feels better to stay GF, stay on the diet.

I was diagnosed 22 years ago after my fourth child was born.  Sometimes
a trigger like this will be enough to set off the symptoms of CD -so
tell your doctor that you are doing "Preventive Medicine".  Some doctors
know so little about the disease and diet that they just pretend it
doesn't exist - but we know it does.

I had a great many symptoms of celiac (and so do my family) but my blood
tests were negative, so no biopsy was done.  I am nevertheless on a gf
diet, because I am not well if I don't!  I would like to have some
confirmation, but feeling good suffices in the meantime.

If you like to be on the gf diet, it is your decision.  It is not so bad
when you get used to it.  And it helps your son to stay on his diet, I
am sure- it must be moral support for him for his parent to also follow
the diet.

If your intestines were damaged serverly, I would stay on a gluten free
diet.  Even though the doctors said, why bother?

Everytime you eat gluten, it damages your intestines, even though you do
not have a reaction.  Once a celiac, always a celiac!!!!!

My doctor said, based on the results, I absolutely HAD to go on the GF
diet in order to prevent getting to the point that I was really sick or
developed other health problems.

In my family, with negative blood tests, this diet has meant the
Difference between life and death, literally.

YEP there are doctors that are so very uninformed, what more did he want
your intestine is severly damaged. Mine is permanently damaged and I
live on TPN no change of ever eating ,would your doctor save your life
if you could no longer eat or drink? Or would he say TPN( if he might
know what this is)  is just too hard.

The doctors are wrong. If your intestines are damaged, you have celiac.
That is the gold standard for diagnosis.
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Ria Kock, the Netherlands